1) The Teachers who truly are not paid well tend to be in red states w/o strong Unions. Those Teachers are doing an enormous service to their community, and many are truly doing it for low wages and benefits.
The Teachers who are mostly working remotely right now tend to be concentrated in areas where Unions have strong power. These are the highest paid Teachers in the country, both in wages, benefits, and protections.
You cannot simply look at base salary in a vacuum w/o examining the value of fringe benefits. This is no different from private sector employees. This is why we call it "total compensation".
This is the NYC UFT payscale. In addition to decent salaries, they receive full healthcare (paid), a defined benefit pension that allows them to retire
@ 55, and post-retirement healthcare for life for their families.
https://t.co/TRW9J2ufIU
If a private sector employee tried to match this benefit, they would need to accumulate over $3M to ensure they did not run out of money in retirement (assuming 3% SWR, 2.5% inflation).
This doesn't count post-retirement health insurance, which can literally cost $20k/yr for a family of 4, with a high deductible. Teachers in NYC get full healthcare at practically 0 cost at the age of 55. Funded by taxpayers.
NYC's package is in line with the rest of NYS, but there are some districts in Westchester and other parts of NY where it is not abnormal for a Kindergarten Teacher to make $100k+ with all the benefits I listed above.
The average American worker gets 2 weeks off per year (if they are lucky) + 10 holidays. Even Tech companies, seen as the "gold standard" of benefits, offer 3-4 weeks off + those same 10 holidays.
Teachers have literally 16 weeks off per year. 10 for the summer, 2 in December, 1 in Feb, 1 in April. Teachers in NYC have at least 20 holidays per year - the same 10 federal, plus several religious and cultural holidays that nobody else has off.
Teachers in NYC can take 5 years of childcare leave off. It is not paid, but it is job protected. This job protection allows them to return to their role without having to interview and compete with candidates who did not take time off. Their job & benefits are protected.
This perk exists literally nowhere else in society - not even the "best" private sector role on the planet. For anyone else who needs to take time off, it is a leave of absence w/o protection or a pure resignation, only to then justify why you have a gap on your resume.
We are still talking about Blue State Teachers as if it is 1980, when in fact, they have been one of the few groups to preserve enormous privilege - low cost healthcare, defined benefits pensions, and job protections unavailable to 99% of the US workforce. And higher pay too.
And finally, it really should not matter how much a person is paid when it comes to doing a job that you are hired to do, which is an actual PUBLIC SERVICE, funded and needed by constituents, which in this case are small children.
There is not a single other profession in this country who has gotten the level of attention paid to their safety. Not even healthcare workers have been given this level of attention by the media and the general public. Why is this?
There have been entire professions working since March. Many of those professions have Unions too, but they knew that their role was essential to the community so they implemented safety protocols and have been working throughout.
I'm not going to use this post to go into the revolting classism (and racism - US Teachers are 80% white) that is at the root of this "debate" because we all know it is there, and I have shared my thoughts on it many times over.
I just wish to dispel the absurd myth that Blue State Teachers (the ones who are predominantly home right now) should have the right to abuse their positions, and destroy the lives of children because "they aren't paid well enough". It's simply not based in reality.
And let me revise one statement - I said above "the average American worker gets 2 weeks off". This is not really "average". This is for people who have secure, permanent jobs. Something like 10-15% of US workers are Gig workers, who get 0 paid time off, and 0 benefits.
Many of those workers are working RIGHT NOW, delivering your food, packages, driving your cabs, and serving the public so that the rest of us can "stay home and save lives". They have been the hardest hit in this pandemic.
Where do you think gig workers, and people who do not have jobs where they can work from home send their children when school is not open? I really want to know what people believe that these workers are doing-or do you simply not think of it, or worse, not care?
And finally, I'm not begrudging Teachers their package-I want every American worker to have this. I just don't appreciate being gaslit into believing that comp is the root cause of this disaster that seems to exist solely in Blue areas, where comp+benefits are strong.
